For many decades the Federal Reserve has rigged the bond market by its purchases. And for about a century, central banks have set interest rates (mainly to stabilize their currency’s exchange rate) with collateral effects on securities prices. It appears that in May 2010, August 2015, January/February 2016, and currently in February 2018 the Fed is rigging the stock market by purchasing S&P equity index futures in order to arrest stock market declines driven by fundamentals, and to push prices back up in keeping with a decade of money creation.

No one should find this a surprising suggestion. The Bank of Japan has a long tradition of propping up the Japanese equity market with large purchases of equities. The European Central Bank purchases corporate as well as government bonds. In 1989 Fed governor Robert Heller said that as the Fed already rigs the bond market with purchases, the Fed can also rig the stock market to stop price declines. That is the reason the Plunge Protection Team (PPT) was created in 1987.

Looking at the chart of futures activity on the E-mini S&P 500, we see an uptick in activity on February 2 when the market dropped, with higher increases in future activity last Monday and Tuesday placing Tuesday’s futures activity at about four times the daily average of the previous month. Futures activity last Wednesday and Thursday remained above the average daily activity of the previous month, and Friday’s activity was about three times the previous month’s daily average. The result of this futures activity was to send the market up, because the futures activity was purchases, not sales. http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/e-mini-sandp500_quotes_volume_voi.html

Who would be purchasing S&P equity futures when the market is collapsing from under them? The most likely answer we can come up with is that the Fed is acting for the PPT. The Fed can actually stop a market decline without purchasing a single futures contract. All that has to happen is that a trader recognized as operating for the Fed or PPT enters a futures bid just below the current price. The traders see the bid as the Fed establishing a floor below which it will not let the market fall. Expecting continuing declines to make the bid effective, they front-run the bid, and the hedge funds algorithms pick it up, and up goes the market.

Is there another explanation for the shift in the market from decline to rise? Are retail investors purchasing dips? Not according to this report in Bloomberg — https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-12/record-23-billion-flees-world-s-largest-etf-as-panic-reigns — that last week a record $23.6 billion was removed from the world’s largest ETF, the SPDR S& 500 index fund. Here we see retail investors abandoning the market.

If central banks can produce zero interest rates simultaneously with a massive increase in indebtedness, why can’t they keep equity prices far above the values supported by fundamentals? As central banks have learned that they can rig financial asset prices to the delight of everyone in the market, in what sense does capitalism, free markets, and price discovery exist? Have we entered a new kind of economic system?

To begin with, this statement by the Bank of Japan’s Kuroda validates my blog post yesterday about Japan’s monetary pivot to gold and to the east: “no need and no possibility for helicopter money.”

My best guess is that the only productive activity for Bernanke on his last trip to Japan was eating blowfish sushi and hitting the teenage stripper establishments.

The manipulators are making it easier for us to accumulate gold at a cheap price. I moved money from my fiat checking account into Bitgold every day this week and twice yesterday. I managed to catch what looks like the low of this latest manipulated pullback. Every time they hit gold I buy.

I exchanged emails with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts yesterday about the sell-off of the price of gold this week caused by the obvious “invisible” hand of the Fed. Note this was a week in which Japan was supposedly going to drop $100 billion in helicopter money at Ben Bernanke’s behest – an announcement which should have sent gold soaring:

Me: I agree this was a manipulated take-down of the price but, you know as well anyone, markets never go straight up except the Dow/S&P 500 when the Fed wants to make those indices go straight up – like now. Gold was overdue for a trading correction. I agree there’s some idiots out there who think the Fed is powerless now over gold – that’s ignorance or sensationalism.

Dr. Roberts: Is there such a thing as a trading correction when the price is controlled and manipulated? Is it a trading correction when the bullion banks dump, as we have shown numerous times, massive paper shorts in the futures market?

Me: I agree with your point there – but to be honest, I like to see any market pullback after it has the type of run that gold has had since early February. Should it be pulling back from a much higher price platform? Yes. But gold was on the verge of going parabolic, which is never healthy in any market. The Fed is doing us a favor. I have been moving a lot of money from my checking account into my Bitgold account this week every morning. If gold was not being pushed down, I might not have added any.

The other interesting aspect of your point there is the amount of paper the Fed is needing to throw at gold to keep the price down. The open interest has been more or less at an all-time high on the Comex for a few weeks now. The last time the open interest was this high was when gold was pushing $1900.

In other words, it is requiring a much bigger relative effort for the Fed to prevent the price of gold from spinning out of its control now than it did when gold was about to launch over $2000.

They have not lost complete control yet, but they are much closer to that event now than they were in 2011.

On another note, the fact that the SPX spiked higher on the original Japan helicopter money announcement but has not sold off on the withdrawal of that threat underscores that fact that the Fed is pulling out all stops to push the market higher

But this is just the “marquee” indices – the Dow, SPX and Naz – as plenty of stocks have been and are heading lower because the core economy in the U.S. is falling apart.

I said half-facetiously in early 2004 that if a small nuke detonated in Times Square that the Dow would probably shoot up 200 points. Today I reiterate that assertion with full sincerity. All of the markets, but especially the stock market, are now openly manipulated. The Fed and the Treasury never bother even to tacitly deny it.

Yesterday in our conversation with Paul Craig Roberts, Dr. Roberts rhetorically asked, “why does the Fed operate a massive and highly sophisticated trading desk in New York?” I add to that question, rhetorically of course, why does the U.S. Treasury’s Working Group On Financial Markets office in the same building as the NY Fed in NYC?

The Fed officials are back at it threatening us with interest rate hikes in April once again after weeks of bluffing before blinking at the March FOMC meeting. If these guys can’t raise rates just one quarter of one percent – if for no other reason than to avoid looking like village idiots – then the true condition of the underlying economic system must be far worse than any of us can imagine.

This rate-hike “meme” dove-tails well with Chicago Fed National Activity report released last week showing a sharp contraction in economic activity, as its index fell from +.41 to -.29 in February. It takes a lot to move the needled on that index, which means economic activity contracted precipitously during February. This was reinforced by the big plunge in existing home sales during February per the NAR yesterday.

Lewis Carroll’s imagination could not make this stuff up.

By now everyone is well aware of the fact that the S&P 500 has retraced nearly the exact path that it took after the 11.2% plunge in August (click image to enlarge):

Here’s a few interesting statistics: Through yesterday, there have been 26 trading days and only six have been down days; during the September rally there were a total of 26 trading days before the market rolled over and only eight of them were red; from the Feb 11 bottom through today (Mar 22), the SPX has rallied 12.3%; from the bottom on Aug 25 to the top on Nov 4, the SPX rallied 17.3%; as you can see from the two bottom panels in the graph, the RSI and MACD momentum indicators are as “overbought” now as they were at the top of the last plunge/spike-up rally; in both cases, the SPX has rallied back above its 200 dma (red line).

Currently the stock market is more dislocated from the underlying fundamentals of the U.S. financial, economic and political system than at any time the history of the country. While it seems that current push higher in the stock market is climbing the euphemistic “wall of worry,” at this point the current rally is less powerful than the previous move off of the September 2015 lows.

I was chatting with a prominent cycle theory analyst, Longwave Group’s Ian Gordon, who successfully forecasted the 2008 market crash in 2007. He thinks the Fed will be unable to contain the next stock market sell-off the way it was able to in September. He thinks this current move has, as most, another three months. I told him I thought the market would tip over sooner than that…

In the meantime, one has to wonder if both Fed officials – Dennis Lockhart and John Williams – have somehow been wandering around Alice’s Wonderland with their heads firmly inserted where the sun never shines.

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I love PCR’s well informed analysis of the situation. He clarified things for me when I read his book, How America Was Lost. The 9/11 commission report was delayed for a year, and then those on the commission felt they were lied to and not given all the information they requested.

I believe the neocons are afraid of Trump. That is a good enough reason for me to give him my vote. We should have another investigation of 9/11. Since President Obama has not answered the call, then it needs to be Trump.

A fact that you will NEVER hear on Fox News or CNN or in favorite mainstream media “news” source is that name “Homeland Security” is the same name used by Hitler’s Nazi regime. I find it quite amusing that neocons and liberals alike equally endorse the implementation of the same type of population control measures employed by the Third Reich. Et tu?

My good friend Paul Craig Roberts is a Patriot in the true definition of the word because he is a former high level Government official and policy planner who has devoted a large part of his time toward an attempt to expose the truth about what’s really going on behind the proverbial “curtain” that has been erected between the DC/Wall Street Mafia and the mainstream public.

His latest article discusses John Perkins’ “Diary of an Economic Hitman,” which describes the process by the U.S. Government has been taking control and looting lesser developed nations for decades. The same tactics are now being applied to some of the smaller EU countries.

I would add to this that I strongly believe that the U.S. has been attempting to destabilize and gain control of both Russia and China and that it is this hubris that will eventually result in the outbreak of WW3. Ironically, the United States’ “war on terror” is being conducted by the most dangerous terrorist Government in the world.

I was first dragged, somewhat unwillingly, on to the “dark side” back in 2001. I was spending my time shorting the market, mostly still-overvalued tech stocks at a daytrading shop in Denver. I met a guy who had been studying the precious metals market and all of the issues connected to gold and the evolution of fiat currency since 1971. Really, this development dates back to the founding of the Fed in 1913. And, really, it dates back to when President Lincoln allowed someone to use Government-issued war bonds as legal tender to settle a debt.

After doing my own due diligence on all of the above, I concluded about two years later that what was developing economically and geopolitically would eventually lead to World War Three. Talk about largely playing by myself in the doom and gloom sandbox…

While my opinions don’t need to count, Paul Craig Roberts has written must-read commentary which explains why he believes that WW3 is inevitable:

The events of September 11, 2001, are regarded by informed people as “the new Pearl harbor” that the neoconservatives said was necessary in order to begin their wars of conquest in the Middle East. Paul O’Neil, President George W. Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, has stated pubicly that the agenda of President Bush’s first meeting with his cabinet was the invasion of Iraq. This invasion was planned prior to 9/11. Since 9/11 Washington has destroyed in whole or part eight countries and now confronts Russia both in Syria and Ukraine.

I’ve been following Dr. Roberts’ since the mid-2000’s, when his commentary was published by CounterPunch. Back then everything that has unfolded up til now was regarded as “wild conspiracy theories.” It’s one thing for an amateur hack like myself to predict an eventual World War, but when someone with the career path of Dr. Roberts puts this reality in front of us, it’s worth reading and heeding:

At this point in time, nuclear war can only be avoided in two ways. One way is for Russia and China to surrender and accept Washington’s hegemony. The other way is for an independent leader in Germany, the UK, or France to rise to office and withdraw from NATO. That would begin a stampede to leave NATO, which is Washington’s prime tool for causing conflict with Russia and, thereby, is the most dangerous force on earth to every European country and to the entire world. If NATO continues to exist, NATO together with the neoconservative ideology of American hegemony will make nuclear war inevitable.

Just for the record, don’t blame this on Obama. He’s just a pathetic hand-puppet for the real forces of power behind the scenes who are controlling U.S. geopolitical policy – the Deep State. History will be a harsh judge on Obama’s Presidency, but he’s nothing more than a figure-head who was inserted into the post because he was completely malleable and lacked any DC power base. Hell, all he wants to do is learn how to tee-off without slicing the ball out of bounds and how to avoid 3-putting every green.

Everything in this country is becoming Third World – nothing functions anymore. – Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Shadow of Truth, in reference to the completely rigged financial markets and failed democracy in the United States

Based on the reaction tonight by the stock market futures to the EU/Greek situation – the S&P 500 futures are down 25 pts/1.2% – I would hazard the opinion that the zombies on CNBC were slighly off-base when they asserted last week that a Greek default was already “priced into the market.”

This idiocy displayed on CNBC is emblematic of the extreme degree to which propaganda has infected our media. But it also highlights the degree to which the American public has willingly turned a blind eye to the Orwellian fog that has completely enveloped our system.

A perfect example of a dysfunctional financial market is the Comex silver market. The open interest in silver futures is currently nearly 1 billion ounces of silver. Against this, the Comex vaults are reporting 57 million ounces of actual physical silver that is available to deliver into the silver futures open interest. Never in the history of the known universe has any commodities futures market experienced a dislocation this extreme between the paper contracts which represent the underlying commodity and amount of physical commodity available to deliver into those contracts.

This is a failed market because the Comex silver market no longer operates as a price discovery mechanism. Furthermore, the parties (CME directors, the SEC and the CFTC) responsible for Governing the Comex and for enforcing the securities laws already in place that are designed to prevent markets from becoming corrupted like this have conspired to prevent the Comex from functioning as a bona fide price discovery mechanism. Instead, the Comex has deteriorated into a cesspool of corruption and wealth confiscation.

The TPP Agreement – in our view – is the greatest failure in the history of this country of elected representatives protecting the Constitution and representing the interests of the people who put them in office.

What the TPP does is give transnational corporations immunity to the sovereign laws of any country in which they operate. Any time the corporation can argue that the sovereign law of a country is a retraint on trade. – Paul Craig Roberts, Shadow of Truth

I would argue that the TPP Agreement is the ultimate act of treason by the President and by Congress. The TPP Agreement has displaced all Rule of Law with Rule of Transnational Corporations. Incredibly, 99.5% of the people in this country are either unaware of what the TPP Agreement represents or are just outright unaware of it altogether.

Perhaps the default by Greece and the subsequent GREXIT will incite a political and economic upheaval not just in Europe but in North America as well. If Greece leaves the EU, it will likely trigger the eventual unraveling of the entire EU.

The agenda of the creditors of Greece is to establish the principle that they can over-lend to a country and then force that country to privatize the public sector in order to raise money in order to pay the creditors and they can force that country to cut back on social services to the citizens… in order to pay back the banks. So it’s an assertion that the creditors are above the sovereignty of the country.

The other agenda that’s operating is that the EU and the ECB are using the Greek crisis to establish the precedent that the budget and fiscal policy of EU members becomes the property of the EU – that this is something that is no longer done at the member-State level, it’s set in Brussels. – Paul Craig Roberts, Shadow of Truth

If we are lucky, a GREXIT will “blow up” the attempt by the western elitists to implement a plan of centralized Governmental control of everything – the so-called New World Order movement. On the other hand, the risk is very real that the neocons who have seized control of the U.S. Government, especially the Pentagon, will resort to launching nuclear weapons in a desperate attempt to hold on to the United States’ global hegemony that is quickly slipping away.